The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Getting out of it, if we have any sense.’

  There were a few vehicles parked outside the hotel. ‘We’ll take that one,’ Ben said, pointing to a GMC four-wheel-drive parked opposite. Alex trotted over to it and reached inside the driver’s door to flip down the sun visor. A key dropped into her palm. ‘I’ll drive.’

  Ben opened up the rear and laid Zoë gently down on the back seat. She stirred and groaned. He was sorry for what he’d had to do to her, but there was no time to worry about it now. He climbed in beside Alex as she gunned the engine into life. ‘There’s a first-aid kit under the seat,’ she told him. He opened the box and sifted through. Bandages. Surgical tape and scissors. A tube of codeine tablets. He swallowed two of them and leaned back in the seat, pressing hard against the wound to stem the bleeding.

  Alex accelerated hard away from the hotel. The road was narrow and twisty, forest on either side.

  ‘We can’t stay on the road,’ he said faintly. ‘I don’t want to come face to face with forty of your Agency friends, FBI and whoever else. If you see any kind of track, take us down it.’

  ‘You’re crazy. You’ll lose us in the wilderness.’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  Alex was a good driver, and the big GMC felt solid and planted on the loose surface as she kept her foot hard on the floor. After a couple of miles there was a gap in the trees, and Ben saw a dirt track snaking away to the right. ‘There.’

  She threw the car into it, skidding into the turn. The car juddered and hammered over the uneven track. Branches and bushes skimmed past in the lights, raking the windscreen. Ben pulled the bloody material of his shirt aside and felt the wound. The bullet-hole was in the fleshy part of the shoulder. He didn’t think it had hit bone. The whisky flask was still about half full and he sluiced the wound with it as she drove, grimacing at the sting. He peeled off his shirt, unravelled a length of bandage and started binding himself up.

  ‘How bad is it?’ she said, glancing across, raising her voice over the engine roar.

  ‘Fine,’ he muttered. The pain was dulling as the codeine hit his bloodstream.

  ‘It’s not fine. We’re going to have to get that bullet out of you fast.’

  ‘Just keep moving,’ he said.

  The track carved deep into country. After about six miles it was so overgrown that they were driving blind, crashing through dense undergrowth. On the back seat, Zoë was groggily propping herself up, rubbing her face where Ben had hit her and holding onto the door for support as the GMC lurched wildly from side to side.

  Alex’s eyes were concentrated fiercely on the screen, hands tight on the wheel. After a few more miles she was forced to slow to a crawl, and the track had petered out to nothing. The GMC battered its way through a giant thorn bush, broke free and suddenly they were in open countryside with an ocean of dark prairie stretching out in front of them. The stars were out and twinkling, and the mountains were a black jagged silhouette against the sky.

  ‘The Montana hi-line,’ Alex said. ‘Where the great plains meet the Rocky Mountains. Nothing but wilderness.’

  After a dozen more brutal miles, the terrain was becoming increasingly rough and the rocks and ruts were forcing them to take a wild path. Alex was getting exhausted, shaking her head to stay focused. Then the GMC lurched violently sideways and pitched to the left, almost going over. Ben felt himself sliding across the seat and braced himself with his legs. In the back, Zoë cried out. The car ground to a halt, something clanking from the front end. Alex swore and pumped the accelerator, but the wheels had lost traction and were spinning in the dirt. She swore again.

  Ben opened his door and jumped down, clutching his shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, but his shirt and jeans were black with blood. He staggered in the dark, light-headed with pain, cold sweat on his brow. The GMC was tightly bedded into a rocky rut that had been hidden by bushes, impossible to spot in the dark. ‘We’d need a tractor to tow us out,’ he said. ‘We walk from here.’

  Zoë’s jaw dropped open. ‘My God, this is your idea of a rescue? I’m not walking out there.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You stay here to fend for yourself, among the rattlesnakes and grizzlies.’ He turned to Alex. ‘We’ll need to conceal the car. It’s easy to spot from the air.’

  ‘You think they’ll come out in helicopters?’

  He smiled weakly. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  They salvaged what they could from the car – there were a couple of blankets in the back, bottled water, a Maglite, some matches, binoculars. Ben packed all the stuff into his bag together with the first-aid kit. Then he and Alex explored the wooded valley around them, gathering branches and bits of shrub by torchlight and building them up in a mound around the car. There were a hundred questions he badly wanted to ask her, but right now there were more important priorities. He felt he could trust her, though he didn’t know why.

  After a few minutes the vehicle just looked like a big clump of vegetation under the moonlight. Ben nodded to himself, and hefted the heavy bag onto his good shoulder. They set out in single file across the rocky terrain, the moon lighting their path. Ben kept Zoë close by him, grabbing her arm to keep her moving when she fell back. She was sullen and unwilling, and complained loudly whenever she stumbled over a rock or a tree root.

  He ignored her and trudged on. Every so often he glanced up at the stars to maintain their northerly course. Alex had said the hotel was fifty miles south of Chinook. It made sense that the closer they got to civilisation, the more likely they would be to come across a road or a farm from where they could work out their next move. And Ben knew that sooner or later he’d need medical attention. Untreated, the wound would fester. He was thankful for the recent tetanus booster he’d had – but he’d seen gangrene set in quickly in lesser wounds than this.

  As he walked he could feel his energy gradually dwindling and the grinding pain in his shoulder beginning to intensify again. He fought the urge to take another painkiller. He couldn’t afford to waste them. There was a lot of distance ahead, and a lot of pain.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The ground sloped steeply upwards ahead of them, rising out of the forested valley, the cold wind whistling about their ears. They walked wearily in silence, and after a while Zoë lost the energy even to complain any more.

  At the base of a towering limestone mountain, fifty metres above the valley, they found a cave entrance shielded from the wind by an overhanging lip of rock. Ben shone the Maglite inside, checking for signs of wild animal habitation. The cave would have been an ideal lair for a grizzly or a mountain lion, but there were no traces of droppings or half-finished kill. Alex and a resentful Zoë gathered dry boughs and fern leaves for bedding while Ben built a fire at the back of the cave, arranged so that the smoke would rise up to the roof and escape through the entrance. He lit the tinder with a match, and after a few minutes he had a good blaze going. Exhausted from pain and drenched with cold sweat, he collapsed on the leafy floor. Alex joined him, frowning in worry as she settled next to him. She felt his brow and ran her fingers through his damp hair.

  Zoë flopped down opposite, ignoring them. She grabbed a blanket for a pillow and lay down. She was asleep soon afterwards.

  Ben prodded the fire with a stick. ‘It’s time for you and me to talk.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ Alex said. ‘But it’s not a hell of a lot.’

  ‘Tell me about Jones.’

  She sighed. ‘I was assigned to his unit eight months ago. I never liked the guy. He’s a class A creep. I was about to request a transfer to a different unit when things started getting strange. I was part of a team watching a guy called Cleaver. Phone taps, email intercept, close surveillance, the works.’

  ‘But nobody told you why.’

  ‘The Agency works in mysterious ways a lot of the time. You accept that they don’t always disclose everything to the field agents. But this was different. Only Jones ever saw the transcripts of calls. The
rest of us were kept in the dark. I even started listening at doors, and that’s how I knew some agents had been sent to Greece.’

  ‘Marisa Kaplan was one of them,’ he said. ‘Know her?’

  ‘No, but I found her name on a file. One I could have got in a lot of trouble for looking at. She’s ex-CIA. No longer active.’

  Even less active now, Ben thought. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Then about ten days ago,’ Alex went on, ‘there was this sudden flurry of activity. Jones was all keyed up, on the phone a hundred times a day, real grouchy. Next thing, a team of us were scrambled together and posted up here in Montana.’

  ‘That was when Zoë was brought here from Greece.’

  She nodded. ‘They flew her by private jet as far as Helena, and then brought her out here by chopper. We were told she was a key witness to a terrorist bombing in Greece. But I never bought it. The Agency just doesn’t operate that way. I’ve never seen a holding facility like this. I think they’re using Government resources for their own unofficial business. I was just about to report it to the top level. But I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because of what happened to Josh Greenberg. I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like a good guy. Jones shot him in the face.’

  ‘Jones seems to like shooting people in the face,’ Ben said.

  ‘When that happened, I was just too scared to think straight. I felt isolated. I wish I’d done something.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘But I didn’t know who I could trust. Then suddenly the call came through that we were all to fly back down to Georgia. They’d found out about you. You know the rest.’

  ‘I remember you from the day they caught me,’ he said. ‘The look on your face. I could see you were different.’

  She glanced at him. ‘I shouldn’t have let them take you that day. I should have done something.’

  ‘There wasn’t much you could have done. You’d just have ended up like the two cops. These people are killing anyone who stands in their way.’

  She gazed through the firelight at Zoë’s sleeping form. ‘I don’t know what the hell she’s got that they want,’ she said. ‘But they want it pretty damn badly.’

  ‘Maybe more than you know,’ Ben said. He spent the next fifteen minutes telling Alex everything that had happened. Her eyes widened in stunned horror as he described the bombing. Then he went on. One baffling detail after another. Laying it all out. Skid McClusky. Clayton Cleaver. Augusta Vale’s hundred million. Zoë’s discovery. The blackmail.

  She listened carefully to every word. By the time he’d finished, she was staring at him in bewilderment, struggling to grasp the enormity of it. ‘It’s so weird,’ she breathed. ‘None of it makes sense. Why would they want some piece of pottery? Why is some obscure matter of theology important to them?’

  ‘How long was your team watching Cleaver for?’

  ‘Months.’

  ‘So that’s how they found out about Zoë. When she tried to blackmail him, they picked up the phone call. Then when Skid McClusky went to Cleaver’s office to deliver the box, they were already watching. They were the ones who went after McClusky. And if his ex-girlfriend hadn’t turned up, they were going to torture him to death.’

  Alex’s brow crinkled in concentration. ‘So what you’re saying is that the whole thing with Zoë is just incidental.’

  ‘Cleaver is the key,’ Ben said. ‘It all revolves around him. But I don’t think he even knows it. The question is, why were they watching him in the first place?’

  There was silence as they both sat trying to puzzle it out.

  ‘They’re planning something,’ she said. ‘I just know it.’

  ‘Planning what?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘Who’s Slater?’

  She looked blank.

  ‘He was with Jones in the hotel. Red hair. Small build. Sharp suit. Didn’t look like a cop or an agent. He’s in charge of it. Jones answers to him.’

  ‘I never heard of any Slater,’ she said.

  His shoulder was cramping, and he tried to make himself more comfortable against the hard wall of the cave. Agony lanced through him like a blade, and he shuddered. He was suddenly terribly weary from the mental effort of trying to work all this out.

  She looked at him in concern. ‘You’re in a lot of pain, aren’t you? There’s some codeine left.’

  ‘Save it for tomorrow,’ he muttered.

  ‘Let me take a look at it.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ he protested.

  ‘I’m not going to let you die on me, Ben. I need you as much as you need me.’ She reached across and started unbuttoning the bloody shirt. He resisted, then relented and leaned back as she drew the shirt off and carefully unwound the bandages. ‘You’ve done this before,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Three years at medical school, before I dropped out to get a taste of adventure, travel the world. Dumbest thing I ever did.’ She shone the Maglite across his chest and shoulder. ‘And you’ve been shot before,’ she added, noticing pale scars on his torso.

  ‘Twice before. That one’s a shrapnel injury.’

  ‘Quite a collection,’ she said. She inspected the wound closely. ‘I don’t think there’s any internal bleeding, Ben. But we need to get that bullet out of there. You ought to be in hospital.’

  ‘Out of the question,’ he murmured. But he was too weak to protest. Alex bundled a blanket under his head, and he lay back on it as she bandaged him back up, winding the gauze expertly into a tight and secure dressing. Then she helped him get his shirt back on, and draped a blanket across him. ‘We should get some sleep,’ she whispered.

  He watched in the flickering firelight as she made up a bed of fern leaves and settled herself into it. After a few minutes the steady rise and fall of her body under the blanket told him she was sleeping. He lay awake for a long time, listening to the yap of the coyotes in the distance.

  Sometime in the night he woke to see Alex gazing at him in the dying glow of the fire. Her head was resting on her hands, her hair draped across her face. The last of the flames flickered in her eyes. ‘You were dreaming,’ she whispered sleepily. ‘About someone you love.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Are you married?’ she murmured. ‘Is there someone waiting for you at home?’

  He hesitated before answering. ‘No. There’s nobody. What about you?’

  ‘There was someone,’ she said. ‘Back where I live, in Virginia. His name was Frank. I guess we never had much of a chance. It ended a couple of years ago. We never saw each other – he had his veterinary practice, I was always up at HQ or out in the field somewhere. It just kind of died on us.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I suppose I gave my heart to the Agency.’

  ‘I did that once,’ he said. ‘Gave everything I had to a badge. Then you realise one day how little it really means.’

  There was silence for a while.

  ‘Something Jones said about you,’ she said softly.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said you were one of the most dangerous men alive.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s men like Jones who are the dangerous ones.’

  ‘I saw your file.’

  ‘That’s my past, Alex. It’s not me.’

  She raised her head up a little and brushed the hair away from her face. ‘So who are you, Ben Hope? Really?’

  ‘I’m still working that one out,’ he whispered. Then he rolled over and closed his eyes.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The Richmond House

  Midnight

  Irving Slater’s first reaction, after Jones had sheepishly called him from the hotel to say that Hope had got away with Bradbury and one of the agents, had been stunned silence. That had quickly modulated into pure rage, a blistering superfury that had reduced Jones almost to tears on the phone.

  But now, a couple of hours later, he’d calmed down. Not enough to be able to flo
p down on the giant sofa opposite the fifty-inch screen. But enough to think clearly and gain a perspective on this whole thing.

  And he’d come to a decision, one that he’d resisted for months but which he now realised he’d delayed for much too long.

  He picked up the phone and dialled. Waited. A voice answered.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Never mind that. Listen. Change of plan. This is getting out of hand. I’ve decided to fast-track the Stratagem.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. ‘Why now?’ the associate asked.

  ‘Something’s come up,’ Slater said. ‘Something very interesting that suits us perfectly.’ He described it.

  ‘They’ll all be there? Their president and the four members of the Supreme Council?’

  Slater smiled. ‘All right under the same dome. And a lot of other very important people. Talk about giving them a slap in the face, huh?’

  ‘If we can pull it off …’

  ‘Call Herzog. It takes place in three days. Tell him I’ll double his price if he can make the date.’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ There was a tremor in the associate’s voice. ‘It’s a big step.’

  ‘It’s a very big step,’ Slater agreed. ‘But this is the time. We do this now, or never. “There will be no more delay.” Book of Revelation. See? I read the Bible too. We wait any longer, we’re going to get fucked.’

  ‘This is an important moment,’ the associate muttered. ‘I wish you wouldn’t curse like that.’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking pious. It’s boring.’

  ‘Is Richmond ready for this?’

  ‘He will be. I’ll make sure of that. You worry about your end. Do it now.’

  Slater ended the call. With jubilation in his step he trotted across to the drinks cabinet. Yanked the bottle of Krug out of the ice bucket and poured himself a large glass. He raised the champagne in a silent toast to himself and his moment of glory. Downed the glass in one.

  His heart was beating. He’d done it. No more waiting. He topped up his glass and lay back on the sofa, barely able to contain his excitement. He aimed the remote at the giant TV and stabbed a couple of keys. His favourite satellite porn channel filled the screen, and he savoured that for a while as he polished off the Krug.